On March 22, 2016, explosions in the main airport and a metro station in Brussels killed 31 people and left 300 wounded. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. In the aftermath of the attacks, during three days of national mourning in Belgium, there has been a tangible rise of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiment in the country.
Many public responses assert a national "we" that excludes Muslims—who unsurprisingly were equally present among the victims of the attacks, and who have also participated in the spontaneous acts of solidarity across the city of Brussels.
In response to such exclusionary narratives, former WSRP Research Associate and CSWR resident Sarah Bracke, currently based in Brussels, wrote the following statement. It is her search for another "we" possible in the face of global cycles of violence, and in support of the efforts of many people in Brussels not to align with nationalist and racist political agendas in times of mourning.
We, the people of Brussels, are mourning, as hundreds of people were killed, wounded, maimed, and familiar places in our city were destroyed. We don't know yet all the names of those killed, and many of us dread finding out a familiar name on the list in the days to come.
In our mourning, we are reminded that in so many places in this world this kind of violence and destruction happens regularly, sometimes on a daily basis. That in some places a day with 31 deaths is not the worst day. We are trying to wrap our heads and hearts around that—a day with 31 lives brutally taken away might not be the worst day of the week or the month or the year—and words fail.
In our mourning, we are reminded that many of those lives brutally wiped out are hardly reported, hardly recognized, hardly mourned. As we cry, we realize that in this world some lives are considered more worthy of tears and empathy than others. And that this is part of the global structures of violence, and their long histories, we are up against.
In our mourning, we are reminded that this kind of violence, when it happens day after day after day, killing family and friends and destroying homes, leaves people no other viable option than to leave livelihoods that have become uninhabitable and to seek refugee elsewhere. We have been moved by acts of kindness and refuge in the past 24 hours in our city, and believe that everyone fleeing violence has a right to refuge, whether in their own city or in a city thousands of miles away.
We refuse more violence in the name of these deaths we mourn. We refuse the illusion that "bombing the terrorists" will bring peace, or that "terror" and "the war on terror" are categorically distinct. We refuse the battle cries that our world is engaged in a battle of "Islam vs. the West," whether they are uttered by politicians or IS members or anybody else who has a stake in that belligerent world vision. And we are committed to stand up against racism and bigotry against the Muslims among us, who are targeted, out of ignorance or intention, as the perpetrators of this violence. We recognize that such a conflation is part of the same war machinery that has so brutally wiped out lives in our city yesterday. We know halting this war machinery requires the radical refusal of such conflation.
We, the people of Brussels, are determined to mourn and bury our dead as much as we are determined to dismantle cycles of violence that hold only one morbid promise: more death and destruction. We refuse to let our mourning be used for the drums of war. We join the ranks of so many others in this world, which is worn-out by long histories of violence, in saying: your wars stop here—in this household, in this classroom, in this work place, in this community, in this city.